Gogo People - Historical Accounts

Historical Accounts

• In 1878 Edward Hore described them as "hongo squeezing Wagogo."
• The Germans greatly admired their physiques and cattle; otherwise they concurred with Emin Pasha, Henry Stanley, and Edward Hore. Thirty years later, the British also found the Wagogo to be "uninterested in progress."
• In his book In Darkest Africa Henry M. Stanley, while "rescuing" Emin Pasha in order to bring him to the coast, writes,

"On the 26th we entered Muhalala, and on the 8th of November we had passed through Ugogo. There is no country in Africa that has excited greater interest in me than this. It is a ferment of trouble and distraction, and a rat's nest of petty annoyances that beset travelers from day to day while in it. No natives know so well how to aggrieve and be unpleasant to travelers. One would think there was a school somewhere in Ugogo to teach low cunning and vicious malice to the chiefs, who are masters in foxy-craft. Nineteen years ago I looked at this land and people with desiring eyes. I saw in it a field worth some effort to reclaim. In six months I felt sure Ugogo could be made lovely and orderly, a blessing to the inhabitants and to strangers, without any great expense or trouble. It would become a pleasant highway of human intercourse with far-away peoples, productive of wealth to the natives, and a comfort to caravans. I learned on arrival in Ugogo that I was forever debarred from the hope. It is to be the destiny of the Germans to carry out this work, and I envy them. It is the worst news of all that I shall never be able to drain this cesspool of iniquitous passion, extinguish the insolence of Wagogo chiefs, and make the land clean, healthy, and even beautiful of view. While my best wishes will accompany German efforts, my mind is clouded with a doubt that it will ever will be that fair land of rest and welcome I had dreamed of making it."